


Enemy Now

by Steampunk_Hobbit



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: Blackmail, Friendship, Gen, Male-Female Friendship, Romulan-technology worldbuilding, Slow Build, Spying, Suspense, unwilling to comply
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-20
Updated: 2015-08-18
Packaged: 2018-03-08 10:11:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3205430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Steampunk_Hobbit/pseuds/Steampunk_Hobbit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erica Strong wakes up in a lab, on another planet, with her features altered to make her look like a Romulan. The Romulans want her to infiltrate the Federation and relay them information, but how is she to do that when she's, mentally, three hundred years behind? If she doesn't do it though, a chip in her chest will genetically alter her into a real Romulan, an enemy of her race.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Crawae'enh Mnueieri

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is an older story...that I started in summer 2013. I decided that I should put it up here so that I had it both on FF.net and AO3. I hope you guys like it, because I'm having so much fun writing it personally. There's just not enough Romulan stories out there...
> 
> As the tags say, this is a slow build. I hope you guys enjoy it even if it ends up being a little slow. lol, sometimes I feel like I'm writing and making the tone rushed, but then, on other times, it takes FOREVER for the story to move on. I'm working to remedy that, lol.
> 
> And, just to let you know, the name of each chapter will be written in Romulan, and I'll write the pronounciation and translation as well :)

**(krah-wah-eh'eh- _ny_ [as in canyon] m-nuh-eh-ee-eh-ree)  
"Feeling Threatened"**

The first thing she heard were quiet whisperings as she woke up. Her contemplative mind slowly picked the voices apart and knew that they did not belong to her parents. Or her younger brother. She briefly wondered if she had left her window open the night before and was just hearing the conversation of a small group of walkers that was passing below it.

But when she slowly cracked her eyes open, she knew that something was wrong. She was lying on an incredibly hard surface, and her forehead and ears felt funny. The ceiling itself said a lot, since the ceiling she was staring at was not decorated with the popcorn texture her bedroom ceiling had been, instead it looked to be made of metal.

Her chest seemed to constrict as panic tried to take over. Where was she? How did she get there?

“Ah, good, you’re awake,” a voice said before a man stepped into her view. The man was strange. He was tall, had black hair cut into some sort of a bowl-cut, pointy ears, sharply angled eyebrows, and two dull ridges on his forehead, branching out and up from between his eyebrows in a ‘V’. “Erica Strong, I presume?”

She stared at him, unsure of what to say. But she opened her mouth anyway. “Yes…” she croaked. Her throat suddenly felt very dry, like she had just tried to swallow a dessert.

He smiled at her, and she could tell he was happy. She didn’t know why, and she would like to know, not like she wanted to be a busy-body or anything…it’s just…

“You are probably wondering about what has happened,” the man said. “Not to worry, everything will be answered soon enough.” She watched as he looked down at something before he returned his gaze to hers. “Do you feel well enough to sit up?”

She looked into the man’s eyes with uncertainty. “I’m…not…sure…” she admitted rustily.

“Here, let me help you up,” he said. He held out his hands and grasped her shoulders, and she shakily grabbed onto his forearms. Slowly, he helped her sit up. Small grunts escaped her as she was levered into a sitting position. The man patted her shoulder in comfort, and she had no idea what to make of it.

This man, she had never seen him before, never met him before, and yet he was treating her nicely?

Erica watched him closely as he walked away from her with what looked to be an iPad in hand. He put the pad off to the side before walking over to some kind of machine. She watched him closely, and was amazed when he said, “Computer, one glass of water,” and a glass of water appeared on a tray under the machine.

He picked up the glass of water and walked back over to her. He held the glass out to her, and she looked at it apprehensively. Was it safe?

“Do not worry, it is safe,” the man said. “You saw me get it.”

Slowly, she reached out her hand and took the glass. She felt so very weak, and she had no idea why.

It took some effort, but she managed to lift the glass to her lips without spilling any of the liquid onto herself. The water soothed her throat and freed up her vocal cords. She ended up draining the cup, but her thirst was not quenched.

“Would you like some more?” he asked. At her nod, he went and got her another glass, leaving her to set the empty glass in her hand off to the side.

He came back and gave her another glass. “Any questions?”

She nodded again. “Yes…” she said quietly. She looked away from him for a second and surveyed the room. “Where…” she cleared her throat, “where am I?”

“Interesting question, my dear,” the man said. “But you have the right to know. You are…” he paused, seeming to think about what he was about to say. “You are on the planet Romulus, the central planet of the Romulan Star Empire.”

She stared at him. She didn’t believe him, and she knew it. “I don’t understand…” she swallowed thickly. “I…I went to sleep on Earth…” a shallow breath. “…And now I’m here.”

There was a small silence as the man seemed to stare at her. Her heart squirmed in her chest, and she was becoming increasingly more distressed. His smile dropped slightly, flattening out. “It’s going to take some time to get used to, and I understand that. But you’ll need to blend in if you are going to have any chance of surviving on this planet, and in order to do that, you’ll need to listen to me very carefully.”

“O-okay,” she replied, quietly. “But…what is your name?”

His smile returned, appearing much more comforting than before. He sat down next to her on the table before he replied. “My name is Galan, of the house of Tal’Aura. I am a scientist working on bettering the people of Romulus.”

She looked at him carefully. “Do all Romulans share the features that you possess?”

“Indeed. I do hope that they do not frighten you.”

She shook her head. “No, they don’t.” she bit her lip. “Not many things scare me…”

That made the man—the Romulan known as Galan—chuckle. “That is good. A brave girl is what is needed.”

Feeling a little bit bolder, she looked up at him curiously. “Why am I here? You were going to tell me why before I interrupted.”

His smile became grim and flattened out a bit again as he began to explain. This made her nervous. He explained why she was in this room—which turned out to be a lab, his lab. The thought of having woken up in a lab terrified her. Even though the man was kind and made sure that she was comfortable by offering her a glass of water, that didn’t make it any less scary. The world ‘lab’ echoed inside her head as if Galan had been standing at the mouth of a cave and had yelled the word into it. _Lab…lab…lab…_

The tips of her ears and her forehead still felt a little uncomfortable, tingling slightly, and she wondered if he had done anything to them while she was out. She was too afraid to touch them in fear that she would feel some sort of deformity. He could have done anything to her before she had awoken, and that made her even more afraid. Did he change something? Could she trust him?

Everything in her told her not to, no matter how friendly he was acting.

Suddenly, it was getting hard to breathe. “…Many of us Romulans have never seen a human up close. But it is my goal to keep your true nature from being seen. The Council depends on—” he cut himself off when he noticed that she was breathing more rapidly. There was a panicked look on her face.

“Can’t breathe. Scared,” she said, trying to explain without wasting precious oxygen in the process.

An alarmed look appeared on Galan’s face. Quickly, he picked something up and held it out towards her neck. This only caused her to struggle breathing even more so. She pulled away, and Galan got to his feet in order to get the thing closer to her neck. “Don’t worry,” the Romulan soothed. “This is a hypospray. I’ll press it to your neck, and the medicine inside will help you to relax.” He looked her in the eye. “Take deep breaths, Erica.”

She felt something press into her neck before it hissed as it discharged. She felt the effects immediately.

A drowsy look appeared on her face as her breathing quickly returned to normal.

“Feel better?” Galan asked.

She nodded before her eyes closed and she lowered herself onto the tabletop. She was out a few seconds later.

[~]

Galan watched as Erica slept, quickly finishing up her newly created file so that it looked like she was born and raised on Romulus. He finished with putting her new Romulan name and the date of birth in before saving and sending it away to the right people, namely, the Council that ruled Romulus. He felt slightly uncomfortable that he had to do this to the girl, but he had no choice. He thought ripping the girl from her own time and performing surgery was enough, but obviously it wasn’t.

The door to his lab opened behind him, and someone strode in. They came to a stop beside him, and out of curiosity, he turned his head to look at them. He started and stood at attention when he noticed that the Romulan was Commander Sela. The blonde Romulan looked from Galan to the girl passed out on the table.

“What happened?” Sela demanded calmly. “You told me that she was going to be conscious by now.”

Galan sighed. “She was conscious, Commander. But the situation overwhelmed her and I had to sedate her,” he replied. He looked at the girl’s peaceful face. “She has been through a lot. I don’t know how she’s going to pull through.”

“She’ll have to, Galan,” Sela stated in a deadly calm voice. “Or she’ll be disposed of and a new test subject will replace her.” She glanced at Galan’s tools. “Oh, but she might listen to you more if you insert the chip. You better install it now before she gains consciousness again.”

“Yes, Commander,” Galan said obediently.

“Good.” And with that, the female commander turned and left the lab.

The scientist watched her go before he turned and got to work. From his surgical tools, he took out a sterilized knife before he sterilized a patch of skin near the girl’s collarbone. Carefully, he made a shallow incision and slid the chip inside.


	2. Aihr-hwai Faikaru

**(ah-ee-hwah-ee fah-ee-kah-ruh)  
"This Is Your Mission"**

Erica jerked awake when the effects of the sedative relinquished their grip on her. A gasp escaped her when she realized that what she had thought was just a dream was actually reality. She tried to hold back the tears, but a couple escaped anyway.

She heard a door slide open before closing again, and footsteps. Someone walked up to her, and when she turned her head to look at them, she saw that it was Galan. He was holding the iPad again, and was scanning her with a small hand-held device. She held very still, too nervous to move.

“My scans read that you are in a state of distress, since your heart is beating rapidly. Please calm down, Erica,” the Romulan stated.

“W-why am I still here?” she asked, her heart continuing to flutter awkwardly in her chest.

A pitying look appeared in Galan’s eyes. “You thought that was all a dream, didn’t you?” he asked.

She nodded.

“I’m afraid that I have solidified your fears, my dear,” he sighed. “Let’s get you sitting up-right, there is a lot you’ll need to learn before we can get you on your mission.”

She was confused. “Mission?” she echoed.

“Yes, mission. That is why you’re here.”

That left her feeling deeply disturbed. Her heart continued to flutter awkwardly before she gathered the nerve to say, “I haven’t seen any clocks around here…do you know what time it is? The date? How long have I been out?”

Galan sighed again, a weary look appearing on his face before it quickly vanished. “You were not out for long, I assure you,” he said calmly. He put the hand-held device away and tucked the pad under his arm. “Now, the mission.” He pulled out a chair and sat down on it as she quickly levered herself up into a sitting position. She wanted to be more on guard this time, and not look as weak as she probably did when Galan had to sedate her. She crossed her legs and braced her hands against her knees as she prepared herself for the worst.

She also noticed that she had been changed into a white shirt and matching white pants. It reminded her too much of a hospital.

“You were taken from your time because we needed a human that wouldn’t be missed. To take a human from a past that has been almost forgotten due to a horrible war would be more logical than taking a human from Earth now where the slightest hint of someone missing would raise alarm,” he said simply, maintaining eye-contact with her. “The mission would involve you being placed amongst the humans, preferably on a starship, where you will listen in on conversations and try to glean any information useful to us by eavesdropping.”

Erica seemed to draw into herself, bringing her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. Her eyes were wide as she tried to process what Galan was saying. The Romulans wanted her to be a _spy_? That was the whole reason why they ripped her away from all she knew? She wanted to cry—her chest seemed to constrict, and she was beginning to feel the full brunt of her emotions.

She was so preoccupied that she didn’t notice that Galan had brought an hand-held mirror out until she saw her reflection in the object. And then she was solely focused on the individual in the mirror.

At first she thought she was looking at another person. But then she began to recognise features that belonged to her face. A pale face stared back at her, sporting the same shade of pale, almost cream, her skin toned down to after a long, harsh, winter. Wide green eyes stared at her, bloodshot from stress. Her thick, black hair, which used to hang down to just past her shoulders, had been hacked off and shaped into a bowl-cut on her head, showing off much of her forehead. And on her forehead were raised ridges just like the ones above Galan’s brow.

Her face contorted in horror as she turned her head to glance at her ears, and saw that they had been sculpted to look pointy, like a Romulan’s. The bloodcurdling scream that left her mouth chilled Galan, and disturbed him greatly.

[~]

After that, Galan had to sedate her when she began to hyperventilate again. He wanted to bite the inside of his check in nervousness, but refrained. He made sure Erica was lying comfortably out on the table again before he went on to filling out more paperwork. This little project had so much paperwork to it because the Council and several others in the government wanted to know every little detail. This was an important project because they needed the eyes on the inside of the Federation.

He knew that there was a large chance that this whole mission was going to fail. He had been the one to be sent to the past to watch Erica for a short time before she was taken, and he knew that, even though she was quiet and quite introverted, she had a hidden streak of courage. She was probably going to reluctantly go along with what the Council and Commander Sela was going to say, but when she got in amongst the humans, she was going to figure out a way to tell the humans around her what was going on without, as the humans put it, sounding like she was “crying wolf”.

After answering a few more questions, he stopped to muse over the current situation. He was a scientist, and it was his job to listen to his superiors. But Erica was an innocent—she didn’t ask to become a Romulan agent—albeit _untrained_ , _meek_ , human girl who probably had just graduated from her first-level schooling system. She had probably been considering delving into her planet’s second-level schooling system when she had been taken from her bed in the middle of the night on her planet, in her time. For a second, guilt ate at his heart, but he quickly squashed it and continued on. It had to be done.

[~]

She came to again, slower this time. Her eyes opened, but she didn’t see at first. She saw the ceiling, but her sight was blurry. Slowly, it straightened out before she could see the fine details on the panels making up the ceiling. Her head seemed to spin for a little bit before it settled and her stomach stopped flopping around in her abdomen. Then it growled, telling her that she was in need of sustenance. She would’ve chuckled if she didn’t feel so wiped. She was hungry, and not nauseated, so she was okay.

But then, everything that had happened before she had been medically knocked out _again_ , came back to her. She sucked in a long, drawn out, breath and her throat clenched up and threatened to make her cry again. But she shoved her fear-induced tears down as she assessed her situation once again. They—Galan?—made her look like one of them, a Romulan, and she didn’t know how to handle it. Was it really necessary for them to alter her features so drastically? Why did they have to cut her hair and shape it like this? It was already black!

She forced herself to calm down in order to keep herself from panicking again. She needed to stay calm in order to get through this. Galan was probably going to lose his patience, and he was going to react (probably violently). She needed to be able to get through this alone, and hope she could survive.

The sound of movement drew her attention from the ceiling and her thoughts. She looked over at the only other occupant of the room and saw Galan turn away from the machine that had created water out of thin air. He walked over to her with a glass of water in hand, and a plate with some sort of bread on it in the other.

Slowly, she pulled herself up into a sitting position and watched Galan warily. A tight smile appeared on Galan’s face for a brief second before it flattened out again. “I have gotten you something to eat,” he said, calmly. “You need to keep your strength up.”

He set the plate down beside her, along with the glass of water. Erica took a moment to study the bread, and saw that it sported various herbs throughout it. Carefully, she picked up the slice, and looked at it closely before she chanced to ask a question. “Is this a Romulan bread?” she asked carefully, and note of curiosity in her voice.

Galan shook his head. “No, it is a human bread we learned of from those of us who travel through the stars,” he explained. “I thought it would be suitable for you at this time.”

Erica gave the article of food a glance. She liked bread, usually with melted butter on it, but this one looked interesting. She wouldn’t know if she’d like it or not until she ate it. Over the next few minutes, she ate that piece of bread with as much dignity as she could muster, while trying to ignore how Galan seemed to watch her eat. It made her extremely uncomfortable, making her unable to make eye-contact with him again until she was finished and she had set the plate down on the table/bed beside her. “Thank you,” she said quietly. “It was…delicious.”

She couldn’t help but think about the mission that the Romulans wanted her to go on as Galan offered another tight smile and took the plate from where she had put it. They wanted her to spy for them…she had never been able to picture herself as a spy. She was too clumsy, and she’d never be able to sneak around. If she had a choice, she would have denied any suggestions for spying, because she never wanted be a spy. Too many chances of being killed or tortured or else. Now she was being forced to do the very profession she had told herself she’d never get involved in.

“When will I go…to the Federation? What are the people who are a part of this Federation like? How has it affected the world I know?” she asked, curiosity tugging a little at the subject.

“I am not an expert in how Earth and its colonies function, so I’m unable to answer your questions, unfortunately,” he told her, an apologetic tone in his voice. She blinked and looked away, and she couldn’t help but feel a little cold on the inside as silence descended on the lab. She was finding it hard to cope with how her life had been forced to halt and she no longer had control over what was left of her life.

The door on the far side of the room opened and a blonde-haired woman marched into the room, a stern look in her blue eyes. Erica quickly scanned her from top to bottom, taking in her sudden presence and noting that her uniform only differed slightly from what Galan was wearing. The only difference was that this woman’s sleeve shoulders were more squared than Galan’s. Erica couldn’t help but notice how remarkably human this woman looked, even though she had distinctly Romulan ears.

“She’s awake,” the woman stated, tone flat.

Galan nodded. “Yes, Commander.”

“Has she been informed of why she’s here?”

Galan nodded once more. “Yes. I have told her about how she is going to be sent into Federation space in order to get close to officials and, as the humans put it, ‘ferry’ information to us. But she doesn’t know _what_ the information she’ll be seeking is, since I have not been informed of what the information is, either,” he reported.

The woman fixed Erica with an intense stare, freezing the young woman in place. “Well, I believe she has rested enough. It is time for her conditioning to commence,” the ‘Commander’ stated, and Erica couldn’t help but feel that it sounded quite ominous.

[~]

Erica was taken from the lab and lead down a long hall. The ‘Commander’ led the way, and Galan walked behind her, as if to sandwich her between them and cut off all escape-routes. They passed several individuals that shared Galan’s features, allowing her to guess that they were Romulans as well, on their way to wherever they were going, and Erica couldn’t help but look at them until they had walked passed them. Each Romulan didn’t even bother to return her stare, but that didn’t keep her from noting how each one had black hair and dark eyes, just like Galan. Were all Romulans dark haired and dark eyed? Was the ‘Commander’ an exception?

Erica’s musings came to an abrupt halt when they turned and went through a door. Before the doors slipped open, she saw some letters painted on it, but she had no chance of understanding what they meant because the letters weren’t Earth letters. And she probably wouldn’t have been able to understand what the words were if they were printed in Earth letters, anyway. This was an alien world. Their main language wouldn’t be anything she’d understand.

In the room, there were many screens hanging from the far wall. The room was mostly empty, but there was a large chair that sat before the screens. The chair appeared to be made of metal, with a high back and solid arm-rests. As they moved deeper into the room and the door slid closed behind them, Erica couldn’t help but become quite wary of the chair’s presence. It was like one of the chairs from one of her favourite action/adventure movies where a good-guy was strapped down and then tortured by the bad-guys. If her heart wasn’t beating fast enough already, she felt it speed up even more at the sight of the chair.

Galan guided her over to the chair and told her to sit down in it. Erica did so, though slowly, hesitantly, as the morbid thought of the chair gobbling her up as soon as she sat down crossed her mind.

As soon as she sat down in it, Galan made sure that her arms were on the arm rests. There was no time to move her arms from the armrests before large clamps leapt up from inside the ‘rests and pinned her wrists to them. Erica’s eyes widened considerably at this, and watched as Galan strode over to largest screen on the wall, which was positioned directly in front of the chair. A delicate hand with long, sharp, but manicured, nails, clutched her head from behind and forced it back, nails digging into her scalp, in time for another cuff to clamp down on her neck.

She sucked in a sharp gasp as the cold metal pressed against her neck. She had never been much of a claustrophobic individual, but she always had a problem when something closed around her neck. She could remember all the times she had gotten to the point a simple neck-warmer that was too tight had made her feel nauseous when she wore it for too long. She hoped that this cuff would not cause her body to react in the same manner again.

The hand disappeared from her head, but she didn’t allow her head to fall forward. The metal pressed in on her neck from all sides, and she didn’t want it to press into her esophagus and windpipe.

Galan moved away from the screen before her with what looked to be a pair of large-lensed sunglasses in hand. Erica could hardly focus on her panicked breathing as she watched the green-lensed shades come ever closer until Galan was lifting them to her face. She was struggling, but getting nowhere. The glasses were placed over her eyes, tinting the world around her a sickly-green. She stopped struggling and inwardly moaned in defeat, but that didn’t stop her from nearly descending into a panic-attack once again.

For the next several minutes, Erica focused on slowing her thundering heart because she did not want to be sedated again. Who knew what these two aliens would do to her when she was out? They could wipe her memory, program her to do something she didn’t want to ever do, or else! Almost ten minutes passed before she got her breathing down and she could think clearly again. Her heart still thundered in her chest to the point it hurt, but there was nothing she could do about that.

“Good,” Galan suddenly said, uttering his first words since they entered this room. “Now that you have calmed down, Miss Strong, would you please look at the screen before you?”

Erica didn’t have the energy to kick up another fuss, so she did what she was told. Galan approached her again, and put what looked to be oversized headphones over her ears. She didn’t like how they pressed in on the sides of her head.

“I assure you this will not hurt you one bit,” Galan told her before he flipped a switch.

A low thrumming sound seemed to fill her head before an electronic voice suddenly sounded in her ears as the screen powered on. _“This is your mission,”_ it said.


	3. Hrrau Na Amosarr

**(hur-ah-uh nah ah-moh-sah-ur)  
** **“On The Warship”**

The low thrumming sound grew in intensity to the point that her brain felt like it was going to be vibrated to bits. She lost all conscious awareness of everything around her except the screen she was forced to stare at. Everything numbed, and she felt all willpower fade as she took in what they were projecting at her.

 _“Your mission is to find information on the Federation’s weaknesses,”_ the voice whispered in her ears as an image appeared on the screen. The image was of a spaceship of some sort. It was grey in colour, with a cylindrical body that flattened out towards the aft-end. Two wing-like appendages came out of either side of the body and curved up, attaching to two cylinder pieces that had thick glowing blue lines on them. On the ends of these cylinders that faced the rest of the ship, there were bright red lights capping them off. There was a thick neck that rose up and connected to a saucer-like section that had to be the largest part of the ship, as well as the widest, even though it appeared to be very thin. Several angles of the ship were shown to her in that image. The image was a series of images all pasted together. The ship reminded her, in a way, of a swan.

 _“You will be taken to one of these ships in a way that it makes it look like you were found by a crew of Romulans on a warbird. You will still appear as if you were a Romulan yourself, but scans will tell them that you are human. They will take pity on you, and you will be taken back to their ship.”_ She wasn’t sure how that was going to work.

More and more information was fed in the form of images until her mind blanked and she lost touch with the present moment. Her sight lost focus and everything blurred until she found herself being sucked into the darkness of her mind, where she fell into unconsciousness.

[~]

Galan watched as Erica’s green eyes lost focus and then glazed over. She slumped in the seat as much as her bounds allowed before her eyes slid closed. He was tempted to bite the inside of his cheek as he watched her fall unconscious, but refrained and went and quickly grabbed his medical scanner, which he had set off to the side. He quickly began scanning her as Sela strode up to him and demanded, “What happened? Why is she unconscious?”

After a few seconds, he had a response. “It was too much for her. We tried feeding her too much information too quickly. The Terran mind is vastly different from the Romulan mind, and Erica Strong is young compared to her species as well.”

“I don’t care how old she is. The question is, will she be fit for acting out the mission at the end of the day?” she said crossly.

Galan nodded once. “Indeed.” He paused for a moment. “And…if members of the Federation encountered a Warbird and you managed to get them to board it, and…if they found her on the ship, and still recovering, they may have even more pitty of her and there would be a greater chance of them accepting her as an individual in need,” he suggested.

[~]

When Erica finally returned to the land of the living, she found herself sprawled out on a cot in a strange cell. The cell smelled musty, like it hadn’t been used in years, and the air was cold, as if the air conditioner had been left on for too long into a summer’s night. She shivered slightly before she pushed herself into a sitting position and gave the cell a once-over. Slate-grey walls glared back at her, and to her right, the wall that should have been there was instead an opening that looked to be filled with a semi-opaque green light.

She wryly wondered about what that green light was. Getting to her feet, she moved over to the opening and reached a hand out to touch the green light, but quickly pulled her hand back as her hand was shocked by the green light, which now proved to be a barrier of some sort. Like a force-field. She took a step back and bit her bottom lip.

Erica ran her hands over her face, feeling the ridges on her forehead and how her eyebrows were sharply angled upwards. It cemented her situation and made her heart sink to her toes. She had been still hoping that this was all a dream, even with all the times she had awoken to find her staring at something Romulan. For a moment, she wanted to believe that she had been continuously awaking from a dream within a dream, but touching the force-field made her realize that this was no dream. It was, somehow, reality.

She rubbed at the inner corners of her eyes, removing the sleep from them while trying to keep herself from bursting into tears. Crying was something she had wanted to do for a long time now, but she hadn’t wanted to break down in front of the ‘Commander’ or Galan. It was a flaw of hers that kept her from releasing the pent-up emotion until she was by herself, which was what she did as soon as she finished assessing her situation.

She turned and kneeled next to the cot, and pressed her upper-body and face into the mattress. Tears pressed up against the back of her eyes before welling up and then spilling out onto the covers on the cot. Soon, she was sobbing as she came to terms with her situation. Erica didn’t know where she was now—she was still on Romulan soil, that was for sure, because there was no other reason why she would be imprisoned like this. After being strapped to that chair, that is. She didn’t _want_ to do what the Romulans wanted her to do, she didn’t have the skills to do it, and all she wanted to do was get back to a normal, _independent_ , and functional life for a girl her age.

After a while, she pulled away from the bed and sat down on her heels. She stared at the wet spot on the covers on the cot that was left by her tears, as she contemplated about her situation. She thought back to when she was with her family, and, normally, she would have burst into tears once more, but right now, she found she didn’t have the energy to do so. The thought of her family reminded her of her mother’s expectations of her, and how her mother used to say that crying when you were scared or hurt wasn’t bad. She remembered, also, how her mother told her how crying _too_ much was bad, and that was another aspect that kept Erica from bursting into tears again.

When she first woke up in Galan’s lab, the only thing that kept her from crying out of fear before she had her first panic attack was the fact that she didn’t _want_ to cry in front of a stranger. Her mind had been too muddled and full of panicked thoughts as well. Ever since she was nine years old, she had told herself not to cry in front of other people, including her own family, because she was tired of being told she was whining whenever she scared or hurt herself. It got to the point that stubbing her toe or cutting herself accidentally didn’t make her feel like she wanted to cry, instead, she would feel numb inside. It made her feel quite proud at herself, but having to hold back the tears from some more tear-jerking situations until she was alone hurt her inside more often than not.

And her face would get quite blotchy, letting all those around her know that she was trying not to cry.

She stared at the covers for what seemed like forever, thinking back to how she had taken her life with her family for granted. She had never thought about how easily her family could be taken away from her. Before she had woken up on Romulus, she had been contemplating her future. What was she going to do with her life? Was becoming a boarder security agent really what she wanted? Did she actually have what it took to pen stories and have them published? So many questions had been flying around in her head, and she had gone to sleep in her own bed on her last day on Earth wondering if her parents had been right about her interests. Was she not suitable for becoming a boarder security agent? Was she too soft for that? But she definitely knew she wasn’t going to become an office administrator, that was for sure.

The young woman was eventually broken out of her thoughts by the sounds of footsteps approaching the cell. She hastily got to her feet and looked out through the force-field, but stood near the back of the cell as she did so.

Galan appeared on the other side of the force-field. She merely stared at him, unsure if she should glare at him or not. Galan had taken care of her before he had strapped her to that horrid chair, it was that female commander that deserved the majority of her anger. She wouldn’t drop whatever guard she managed around Galan, not again, because a stray thought suggested to her that Galan had taken care of her in his lab because it was a part of his job. Not to mention, he was probably the one who altered her features to make her look like a full-blooded Romulan.

“You are awake,” he stated.

“Where am I now? Why am I in a prison cell?” she asked, deciding not to respond to Galan’s words.

The Romulan scientist sighed and blinked once. “You are on an Imperial Romulan Warbird, which is sitting just inside Federation space. We are luring a Federation starship in as we speak. They are responding to a fake distress signal we are broadcasting on all channels. They will most definitely pick up your human signature since our shields are down,” he explained calmly.

Erica merely stared at him, unsure of how she was supposed to respond. Eventually, she found something to say. “So what? They come and find me—would they still believe that I’m a human when I look like a Romulan?” she pointed out angrily.

Galan gave a tight smile at her words. “They have technology that allows them to tell what is human and what is not,” he said simply.

The young woman let out a silent sigh before she turned from the force-field and sat down on the edge of the bed. She looked away from the force-field, and tried to ignore the man standing on the other side of the barrier. She couldn’t help but think about what the humans would do with her when they found her. What would they think of her? She couldn’t help but feel that they would think that she was some sort of spy, and that they were being set up. Heck, the situation that these Romulans were setting up—even _she_ didn’t think it sounded right or realistic enough to not cause suspicion. And she didn’t think she could act well enough to keep them from knowing that she was not nervous. She was nervous now!

Several moments passed by, and she couldn’t help but feel Galan’s eyes boring into her back. The sound of a new set of footsteps approaching the force-field made her turn slightly so that she could watch the opening out of the corner of her eye. Another Romulan appeared and fired something off in a strange tongue. “ _Cehlaer iirhhaedh rrhiet yhaim’eri mhirrafv avaihh. Æim na_ Enterprise.” Then he turned and left, leaving Erica alone with Galan once more.

“What did he say?” Erica asked flatly.

Galan tucked his tablet into a pouch attached to his belt. “A Federation ship has just arrived, responding to our distress signal. Starfleet officers will be beaming over any moment in order to help us repair our ‘damages’.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Cehlaer iirhhaedh rrhiet yhaim’eri mhirrafv avaihh. Æim na Enterprise.”  
> Translation: Galaxy classification starship dropped out of warp. Its the Enterprise.  
> Literally: A Galaxy-class starship dropped out of warp. It is the Enterprise.  
> The Romulan language is quite odd. I’m still learning how to write it correctly. It was hard, but fun to do. I hope you enjoyed this chapter :)


	4. I Fraeta Riud Emael I Fraeta

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoopsies, I forgot to post the fourth chapter here when I published it on FF.net back in June. I hope you enjoy!

**(ee fur-ah-eh-tah ree-uh-d eh-mah-eh-il ee fur-ah-eh-tah)  
** **“To Tell Or Not To Tell”**

“This scheme of yours won’t work,” Erica hissed quietly, unable to gather the courage to speak any louder. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“Humans tend to be quite dull and slow when it comes to situations such as these,” Galan stated, choosing not to hide his condescending tone.

The young woman felt a rare emotion race through her, dumping adrenaline into her veins and making her want to say some very uncharacteristic things. But instead of giving into the temptation, she used this reaction to hotly respond: “What makes you think I’ll ever go along with this as soon as I am amongst humans? You won’t be there to monitor me and punish me if I tell them what you told me to do!”

Galan’s high and mighty bravado suddenly disappeared, and was replaced by a worried look on his face. Was that concern in his eyes? “About that,” he said. “The Commander had me insert a device into your chest that, when we don’t get any information from you, it will activate and genetically alter you into a Romulan.”

Erica stopped and stared at him with wide eyes, shocked speechless at what he had just said. “W-what?” she managed to stutter.

Blackmail. They were going to blackmail her into doing it. If she didn’t do what they said, she would lose her humanity. _I don’t know how the chip would do it,_ she thought, _but I wouldn’t want to take any chances. From what I’ve seen so far, they probably have the technology capable of doing it._

“You can’t do that!” she exclaimed, her horror being displayed quite clearly in her expression.

“But we can.” His response was menacing, but no accompanying grin appeared on his face. Erica’s stomach churned, and her mouth watered, as if she wanted to throw up at what he said. She wanted to scream then run in order to escape, but she couldn’t. She was trapped.

Against her will, a sob escaped her and tears welled up in her eyes. She turned from the force-field and stalked to the back of the cell. She stood as straight as a board and clenched her fists by her sides as she tried to block out the infernal alien on the outside. _He will not win. They will not win!_ she assured herself as she tried to keep herself from humiliating herself any further. She would figure out something, she would figure out a way to not be forced to become something she was not. _But would I be willing to give up what I am in order to keep them from getting what they want if my attempts go south?_

xxx

Quite some time later, a deep voice announced something from a speaker in the ceiling outside the cell in Romulan, but since Erica couldn’t speak Romulan, she once again found herself in the dark. She continued to sit on the cot, where she had placed herself after she had refused to listen to whatever else Galan had to say. She was mad at him and did not want to talk to him ever again.

She was unable to brood about her situation any longer when Galan walked up to the force-field again. Erica hadn’t noticed when Galan had left, but she _did_ notice the three men that now accompanied him. Slowly, she rose to her feet and turned to them, suspicious about their presence. She looked them over one by one, not uttering a single word as Galan explained her presence.

“We found her out in the Neutral Zone, stranded, and decided to see if she would be able to be taken off of our hands when we came into Federation space,” Galan lied.

 _More lies,_ Erica thought with narrowed eyes. It seemed like the story was changing bit by bit all the time.

She quickly turned her attention away from the scientist and finished her visual examination of the three that, with their strange and obviously not-Romulan uniforms, looked quite out of place on the other side of the force-field.

All three men were humanoid, that was for sure, but only two looked human. The one who did not look human was the tallest in the bunch, with dark skin, a large wrinkly/spiky forehead, and long dark brown hair tied back in a ponytail. All three men wore the same kind of uniform, but he wore a yellow one with a curious sash that hung from his right shoulder and crossed over his chest to his left hip.

One of the other men also wore a yellow uniform, but the more she looked at him the more something looked off about him. His skin was too white, and when light hit it at certain angles, it seemed to sparkle slightly. His eyes were a strange, unearthly yellow that, when he noticed she was practically staring at him, seemed to stare into her soul when he matched her gaze. Erica almost couldn’t suppress the shutter she felt when the man returned her scrutiny.

The third and final man was the most normal looking one of the trio. He was tall with brown hair, beard, and moustache and peach-toned skin, and he wore a red version of the uniform. His blue eyes were fixed on Galan as he continued to speak; and for a moment Erica allowed her mind to drift to the thought of her family, and how her father had to be around this man’s height. Oh how she missed her father…

Her thoughts were interrupted again when she saw Galan reach for a panel on the wall next to her cell. After she watched him type something into it, the force-field fell, leaving nothing between her and Galan and the strange men. Erica felt herself tense, and made no move to walk closer to them. Instead, she demanded, “Who are you?”

The man in the black and red uniform smiled a little. “I’m Commander Riker of the USS _Enterprise_ ,” he replied. “And this is Lieutenant Commander Data”—he gestured to the man with the eerie yellow eyes—“and Lieutenant Worf,” he finished as he then gestured to the imposing man with the strange forehead. “We’ve come to take you back into Federation territory.”

Erica furrowed her brow. “And you know I’m human how? The Romulans made me look like them—I look like a Romulan! How do you know I’m not one?!” she was nigh hysterical now. Normally she would be quiet and reserved in the presence of strangers, but she had been running on adrenaline for far too long to care about not sounding rude. She just wanted to feel safe, and to get back to looking like herself. And to get away from these Romulan-creeps.

“I would be able to ease your doubts,” the man with the yellow eyes—Data—said, straightening slightly. “If you would allow me to—”

“You can come closer,” Erica said abruptly, cutting him off. “I just don’t want to be any closer to _him_.” she gestured with the snap of her forearm in Galan’s direction.

Data nodded once before taking a square device off his belt. As he came closer, she studied it with curiosity. From this angle, it looked like it was a mix between an ancient flip-phone, the original Gameboy, and the Gameboy SD. As Data came to stand before her at a respectable distance, he slid a small cylindrical item out of the strange device and held it up to her face. It reminded Erica of a piece of medical equipment, no matter how strange it appeared to be, so she stood perfectly still and allowed Data to wave it about in front of her face.

When he was done, he withdrew the cylinder from her face and slid it back into the strange device in his other hand. He stared at the device for a few seconds before he abruptly said, “It has been confirmed.” He looked directly at her, causing her to feel like he was staring into her soul once more. “You are a human. You possess red and white blood cells; your blood-type is B-negative; the ridges on your brow and the points on your ears are merely cosmetic.”

Erica felt her eyes widen in shock and relief, and she looked down at the device in his hands in astonishment before she looked over in Riker’s direction. “Then…then how did you know I was here before you came on board? O-or did the Romulans tell you about me when you came to…help?” she asked.

Riker chuckled a little and seemed to assume an air that was half casual and half professional. “We’ll explain everything on the _Enterprise_. I will have to stay here with Lt. Worf for now, but I don’t think Data will mind taking you to our ship before coming back here,” he explained.

Erica couldn’t help but feel a little nervous about going to another ship. Galan had mentioned that they were on a ship, and that the _Enterprise_ was another ship—and he had mentioned that they were in Federation space. It had been eating at her for a while. Was it true? Were they in space? Like outer-space? Where the stars and planets were? Galan _had_ mentioned that Romulus was a _planet_ …

With a quick glance up at Data, Erica looked down at the floor before hesitantly nodding. “Okay. Um…I-I would really like to get out of here,” she finally said.

She didn’t look up at Data again, but filed behind him when he walked from the cell and followed him down a hall. After a while, Data turned and walked into a strange room with a stage of some sort in one corner of the room, and a control…desk cross from it. Erica stopped at the door and watched as Data walked to the stage and stepped up to it. Data turned to face in the direction of the control-desk once he had positioned himself so he was standing in one of the sections marked in the stage, and it was then that Erica noticed that a Romulan man was standing behind the desk.

“Um…what does that do?” she asked Data as she pointed at the stage.

Data glanced down at the stage under his feet as if to confirm that she was pointing at it before turning his attention to her. “This is a transporter pad,” he replied before tilting his head slightly to the side in masked confusion. “Did you not use a transporter pad in order to get on this ship?”

Erica shrugged her shoulders with wide eyes. “I don’t have a clue. I woke up in the cell, and they never told me how I got on the ship.” she stepped closer. “What does a transporter pad do?”

She didn’t miss the way Data’s eyebrows furrowed in what she could only guess was his attempts to look inquisitive about what she said. She didn’t miss how the strange man practically had a stoic expression on at all times when he wasn’t trying to look like he had some sort of emotion playing on his face in the short time she had known him. Eventually, his face resumed his normal, calm appearance, and he answered her question. “The transporter pad is what a person stands on if they want to be transported to or from a ship. You must stand in one of the sections indicated on the pad if you wish to be transported. And in this instance, you must stand in one if you wish to leave this ship and get to the _Enterprise_.”

The young woman nodded, indicating that she understood his explanation, though she wondered why he didn’t question why she had never seen a transporter pad before. She decided that she would think on that another time and joined Data on the transporter pad, turning and standing in the section on the pad next to his. She looked warily in the direction of the Romulan behind the desk as Data nodded once, and almost at once, a peculiar sensation seemed to consume her body. It felt like a million ants biting her at once, but it didn’t hurt. As this feeling seemed to attack every part of her body, inside and out, the room with the Romulan behind the control-desk faded out and was replaced with a new room with a human man standing behind a similar desk.

Erica found herself stumbling a bit when the new room fully came into focus. She let out a gasp of surprise when the strange feeling left her abruptly, leaving her with her senses intact. Her eyelashes fluttered as she blinked rapidly, trying to take in the sensory overload as Data stepped off the new stage.

“What…just happened?” she gasped.

Data paused and looked back at her. “You were just transported here from the Romulan ship,” he answered simply, and then walked out of the room.

Erica was forced to calm her thoughts and forced herself to race after the yellow-eyed man. Her bare feet slapped against the carpeted floor as she passed through the sliding double-doors and walked quickly after Data, and when she finally caught up to him, she didn’t bother to ask him to slow down, even though her calves were beginning to burn and a stitch was beginning to form in her side. She was also beginning to feel a bit fatigued and light-headed, but she didn’t dare to bring that up either.

Data didn’t stop until he reached a door and entered. She followed him in and found herself in a long and narrow room filled with a long table surrounded with cushioned swivel-chairs. Data gestured to one of the chairs, as if asking her to sit, and she did. She moved around the table and sat down in one of the chairs facing the door, where she gripped the edge of the table so hard that her knuckles turned white.

“Stay here, the captain will be along shortly. I must return to the Romulan warbird immediately,” Data said.

Erica nodded. She watched as the yellow-eyed man walked from the room and disappeared out the door, leaving her alone in the large room.

She continued to grip the table while she sat alone, thinking over all that had happened since she left that Romulan cell. Was she really free? She hoped that this wasn’t some sort of dream. To make sure, she pinched herself and hissed at the pain it caused. But it allowed her to know that she wasn’t dreaming and that she was actually away from the Romulans.

She had gone from sitting in the Romulan cell, trying to ignore Galan after he had shown her that he wasn’t really all that nice when you were a part of his job, to now sitting in this strange room that reminded her of one of those board-meeting rooms you saw in movies. Data said the captain was coming…would she meet with him in here? It seemed likely that that was true, because if it wasn’t, Data wouldn’t have brought her here in the first place.

Eventually, the door Data disappeared through opened again, and a man in a black and red uniform and a woman with long curly black hair came in. The man wore a stern, professional expression, and it made Erica wonder if this was the captain Data was talking about. The man sat down at the head of the table, only a couple chairs down from where she was sitting, and the woman sat down in the chair to his immediate left.

“Hello, you must be the young lady we found on the Romulan ship,” the man said with a small, formal smile. “I am Captain Jean-Luc Picard,” he introduced himself before gesturing to the woman next to him, “and this is Councillor Troi.”

Erica felt her characteristic shyness threaten to limit her mobility in the face of these strangers. “Um…hi. I’m…Erica Strong,” she managed to say slowly with a small, awkward wave. “Nice to meet you.”

“Likewise,” the captain said with a nod. After a few beats of silence, he said, “Well, Miss Strong, we would like to hear, from you, how you came to be on the Romulan ship. We…don’t quite believe the story that the Romulan crew is feeding us, because they are not the most trustworthy of people.”

Erica nodded. Before she opened her mouth to tell them everything, her mind went back to what Galan had said about the chip in her chest. Was it real, or was it a bluff just to make fear pressure her into doing what they wanted? _What if it’s voice activated? What if it activates when I tell them everything?_ she wondered as she felt her fear make itself known.

The woman spoke up for the first time at that moment. “You don’t have to be afraid,” she told her in a soothing tone. “You can tell us everything, and they won’t know anything about it.”

Erica found her eyebrows screwing up in confusion. “How did you know I was afraid?” she asked shakily.

Councillor Troi smiled comfortingly. “I’m half Betazoid, I can sense the emotions of people around me,” she explained in a pleasant tone.

The young woman nodded, and hid the surprise at meeting another kind of alien as well as she could. First Romulans, now Betazoids? Before she woke up in Galan’s lab, she had believed that humans were alone in the universe. And with the other alien she had seen on the Romulan ship, the one named ‘Worf’, she had to wonder how many were truly out there. She had already counted three, and she didn’t doubt the number would continue to climb.

She quickly returned her train of thoughts to the matter at hand, and the fact that she had yet to answer the captain’s inquiry. She clasped her hands together and twiddled her thumbs as she rested her hands on her lap. Suddenly, she couldn’t bear to look up and meet the gazes of Picard and Troi.

“Um…well, I woke up, I don’t know how many days ago, on Romulus. In Galan’s lab. Whatever Galan told you guys about me being found in the…whatever the Neutral Zone is…well, it’s wrong.” she glanced up at the two in order to gage their reactions before she returned her gaze to her lap.

Both Picard’s and Troi’s faces were grave, but they didn’t say anything, indicating that they wanted to hear the whole story before they said anything about what she said.

Taking a deep, shaky breath, she continued. “I woke up in the lab, and not long after I found out they changed my appearance to make me look like one of them. I panicked a couple of times and passed out more than once, and at one point, a woman—a blonde woman, came into the room and had Galan bring me to this weird room with a wall covered in screens and a chair. I was strapped to the chair—”

Picard politely interrupted her. “You said you saw a woman with blonde hair? What did she look like?”

Erica was confused that the captain wanted to know the identity of the ‘Commander’. Did he know her? “She…she looked more human than the rest of them—her face, I mean. She still had pointed ears, and her hair was cut like all the other Romulans I managed to get a glimpse of. Her eyebrows weren’t slanted—I didn’t catch her name, Galan only addressed her as ‘Commander’,” she told him.

The captain frowned deeply before glancing at Troi. “Sela,” was all he said.

“S-Sela?” Erica echoed haltingly. “Is that that commander’s name?”

Picard nodded with a sigh. “Yes.” After a second or so of silence, he said, “Please, continue.”

It took Erica a moment to find her place in the “story” before she continued on speaking. “Well. I was strapped to the chair…and they put headphones over my ears. And I was forced to listen to things that were said from the headphones, and watch things on the screen in front of me until…until…” she paused and thought about that point for a little bit. “I guess I passed out again. Because the next thing I know, I’m in the cell I was found in on the other ship.” She bit her bottom lip. “As you can see, I wasn’t found in the ‘Neutral Zone’.” she finally managed to gather the courage to look the captain in the eye. “They want to use me as a plant. I’m probably not even supposed to be telling you anything. They wanted to use me to gather information about the Federation, which they wanted me to then send to them. But I don’t want to. If I wanted to, I wouldn’t be telling you this, and right now I’m freaking out inside because if I don’t tell them what they want to hear, a little chip Galan put in my chest will activate, and I’ll be turned into a Romulan. I don’t know how, but Galan sounded pretty serious when he told me about it, and I don’t think I can afford to doubt his words.”

xxx

After Erica had said that, Picard and Troi seemed to grow quite alarmed, and they quickly ferried her out of the room and lead her straight to a part of a ship that looked like a cross between an infirmary and a clinic. Troi called it the ‘sickbay’. She was sat down on one of the many beds that lined the walls as a red-haired woman in a blue and black uniform and a teal lab coat emerged from a glass-walled office off to the side.

Picard had her thoroughly scan her chest area with a device similar to the one Data had, and it wasn’t long until the new woman, who had been introduced as ‘Dr. Beverly Crusher’, confirmed everyone’s fears. “What she told you is true, Jean-Luc,” she said. “There’s a small metal object about ten millimeters by ten millimeters by two millimeters lodged in her chest by her right collarbone. I can’t tell you what it is, but I believe it is safe to assume it’s what Erica told you it was.”

“Thank you Dr. Crusher,” the captain said with a tight smile.

“Is there any chance you could remove it?” Erica asked. She didn’t dare allow herself to get her hopes up.

Dr. Crusher shook her head. “There are several small fibers that stick out from the chip, and they’ve imbedded themselves deep into your muscle tissue. I would not be able to remove it from you without risking damaging some muscle, maybe irreversibly.”

A short whimper escaped the young woman at the news. _What now?_ she asked herself. _The chip will activate if I don’t send anything to the Romulans. I don’t even know what time limit I have? What am I supposed to do?_ What am I supposed to do?!


	5. Temhiullhull?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And...I’m back with another update. I didn’t know I would update this story so soon, since the last time was back at the beginning of June. I’ve been wanting to put up another chapter, and found the time to do so when I read an interesting piece of advice a Camp NaNoWriMo councillor said in an email I got (I get them like a newsletter during NaNo). She suggested, that if I was stuck, stopped by writer’s block, that I should take some time off and work on another project. So I did :3
> 
> I hope you enjoy. I enjoyed writing this chapter. Spelling out this chapter’s title was…difficult, but fun. I’m afraid I won’t be accurate in pronouncing their words for…a long time, lol.

**(tem-hee-uh-i-lahk-uh-ill-ya)  
** **“Sacrifice?”**

Erica stared at her reflection in the hairdresser’s mirror, finding herself overwhelmed once more. Normal, plain, Erica was finally staring back at her for the first time in who-knows how long. Slowly, she shifted the cloak-like bib she wore until she found an opening and lifted her hand up from the recesses of the clothes-protecting garment. She reached up and touched her now-smooth forehead, trying to believe that this was reality and not a dream. Turning her head a bit to the side, she noted the roundness of her ears.

Mirror-Erica was once again human, and that meant that she was also human. That was one thing she was really grateful about the 24th Century, the century she now found herself in—science and medicine had progressed a lot since the 21st Century. Most injuries that were fatal in her century were no longer so in this century.

Erica was now sitting in a very familiar barber’s chair in one of two beauty salons/barber shops the ship possessed. She was surprised that a starship would have hair care facilities of all things on board.

In her reflection, she still possessed the gaudy bowl haircut, but a domed hair-thing was lowered down over her head. Her scalp began to tingle within a few minutes of the machine hanging over her head.

“So, what’s this do?” she asked, gesturing to the machine.

“This is the machine we use to regrow our hair if we had to cut it or it was damaged somehow. It’s one of the many machines we have at our disposal in order to make sure we meet Starfleet standards and dress-code,” Councillor Troi replied.

“Interesting,” Erica muttered while watching the one of the civilians who ran the salon go about her job.

“How long would you like your hair?” the hairdresser asked with a pleasant smile.

Erica returned her smile with a smaller, more timid version of her own. “How about just to my shoulders? Please?”

The hairdresser nodded before disappearing behind her to input her choice into the machine—she assumed.

Soon, Erica found herself watching in wonder as her hair slowly lengthened to the length she had requested. When it was done, the hairdresser pulled the head-dome-thing up and away from her head before handing her a booklet filled with styles for her length of hair.

Out of curiosity, Erica flipped through the pages. Some of the styles and treatments shown were familiar, but there were also plenty she had never seen before. Eventually, she came to the conclusion of what hairstyle suited her best (her mother was no longer around to be nit-picky about which one wouldn’t end up just making her face look as round as a ball), and settled on having her hair crimped a little, and interspersed with a couple tiny braids.

By the time the hairdresser was finished with her, Erica was quite done sitting in a chair on display like that, and was enthusiastically ready to be shown to the room where she would be sleeping and spending some of her time while on this ship. When the bib-cloak came off, she practically leapt from the chair before she walked quickly over to where Troi stood. She managed to contain herself before she ended up running out the door, and turned to look at the hairdresser. “Thank you,” she told her, and received a smile in response.

xxx

The room she was shown—the one that was where she would sleep or go if she wanted to be alone, like a small home or apartment—was at least thirty feet long. And from where she stood at the door, taking in the appearance of the room, the wall across from her was at least thirteen feet away.

A majority of the space looked to be like a living room and a dining area. There was a plush-looking couch that ran along the back wall, backed up to a large window that looked out at the stars. There was a glass coffee table that sat before the couch with an empty fluted vase. To the right, she could see the foot of a bed peeking out from a separate room cornered off from the main of the ‘quarters’, as Troi called it. To the left, she could see the open door that lead to the bathroom.

“This will be your quarters until the threat you’ve alerted us to has been neutralized,” Troi explained to her. Erica watched as she gestured to a computer panel on the wall in the kitchen area. “That’s the replicator,” then she gestured to a larger computer panel on the wall to the left of the door, “that’s the computer that can play music or audio books if you want,” finally, she pointed to a desk in the far right corner, “and that’s a computer terminal.” Erica turned back to the councillor in time to catch the smile she sent her way. “If you need anything, you can use the computer to contact me.”

Erica nodded, pretending to understand what she was telling her. Erica knew that it would take her quite a while to figure out how to operate any of the computers in these quarters, and she could only hope that the bathroom wasn’t going to be as equally as difficult.

 _That’s right; I haven’t told them from_ when _I’m from. It’s not like they’d believe me anyway. I’ll just have to force myself to adapt—if I can,_ she mused.

A few minutes later, Troi left her to get accustomed to her new living space, promising to return in a couple of hours to see how she was doing. Erica walked her to the door and waited until the doors slid shut before turning away to figure out the computers Troi had pointed out to her.

Erica started with the computer panel Troi had called the ‘replicator’. The kitchen was small and quaint, sporting nothing of anything she’d recognise in a kitchen. She eyed the large touch-screen lit up with several coloured rectangles labeled with different numbers and words, before stepping back and crossing her arms.

She took a moment to think back, contemplating if there was some truth in the science-fiction she had taken in before she had woken up on Romulus. It had been a while since she had read or watched anything to do with sci-fi since she had just finished high school. She had been too busy to indulge in much during the days leading up to her graduation, and whatever free-time she had was spent on reading a book or knitting, or doing some other form of arts and crafts. And when she read a book, she would either read something pertaining to fantasy (it would take her far away from the troubles of being on the precipice of choosing what to do with her life) or historical fiction.

But, from what she could remember from the sci-fi shows she would watch and the books she would read was that a person would often address the computer before asking it something.

So she tried that. “Computer…what does a ‘replicator’ do? What is its function?”

The replicator emitted a chirp. “A replicator can replicate any known object or food if it is programmed into its database,” it replied.

Intriguing. _This is probably how they can go for long voyages without having to stop and stock up the kitchens,_ she thought with an amused chuckle. “I am hungry,” she admitted out loud. “So…” she thought back to her favourite dishes and mused about which one she should have. Her mother’s chicken curry dish was one of her favourites, but she was in the mood for something light on the stomach.

Finally, she made up her mind, “Computer, please replicate one bowl of chicken-Caesar salad.” She didn’t think it was necessary to say ‘please’ to a computer, but she had seen plenty of sarcastic computers in the shows she had watched that could somehow become offended if you didn’t use your manners.

She watched as the salad materialised on the tray under the replicator’s computer, appearing prepared in a red plastic bowl with a plastic fork sitting at the ready in the salad. “Fantastic!” she exclaimed with delight, glad that she didn’t have to clean the lettuce by hand or do any of the preparation. She could still remember the days were she would spend a hours preparing a large Caesar salad for her family.

Erica walked over to the small kitchen table and set the bowl down before she sat down in one of the chairs. After she said grace, in which she thanked God for still being alive and that she was no longer in Romulan hands, she dug in into her meal (she didn’t quite know the time, so she didn’t know if it was breakfast, lunch, supper, or a midnight snack). A few bites in, she paused and asked, “Computer, what time is it?”

“It is 1700 hours,” the computer replied in its monotone female voice.

Erica quickly translated the answer into the form of time measurement that she understood. 5:00pm. So she was eating dinner.

When she was done her meal, she set the bowl on the counter and contemplated how she was supposed to get rid of the fork and the bowl. She didn’t see a garbage can or what could be a recycler in the kitchen area, so how was she supposed to get rid of it?

She soon got an idea, but before she could execute it, the computer on the desk across the main room chirped. Curious, Erica made her way over to the desk and sat down beside it. The computer chirped again, and she noted the small message displayed on the screen. _Incoming call…_

Who could be trying to contact her on her computer? Was it Troi? Maybe she couldn’t come to pick her up and was calling her to tell her so.

 _So how am I supposed to answer the call? I don’t see any buttons that say answer…_ the lack of a visible keyboard was throwing her off. “Answer…?” she tried.

The computer chirped again, but this time in a tone that sounded like an affirmative. A second later, the call was patched through, and the last face she expected to see appeared before her.

Her heart leapt to her throat and started galloping like an out-of-control Thoroughbred. “G-Galan…!”

“Hello, Erica.” The Romulan scientist’s visage sat ramrod-straight behind his side of the screen, and he was wearing a mask of neutrality.

“How are you _calling_ me?” she demanded, her voice shaking more than she would like. “I thought I’d never have to see your face again!”

“Unfortunately, you’ll be seeing me more often than you will like, I assure you,” he told her. “I have called to see if you have heard of any useful information since you arrived on board.”

Erica felt her eyebrow’s shoot to her hairline. “What?!” she practically shouted. “Stop it! I’ve been on here for barely a day. All they did was put me in sick bay to return my identity back into a _human_ one, and then I visited the hairdresser so that I could fix my hair and _not_ be stuck with an unflattering bowl cut! So unless you wanted to learn about the latest Federation hairstyles, I’ve got _nothing_ , zip, for you!”

Galan hummed thoughtfully. “I was told to ask you that in order to make sure you stay on your toes. And as for how I’m calling you—my frequency is ‘piggy-backing’, as you humans put it, another frequency. My ship will be leaving soon, and I just want you to remember that the Commander will not take your silence lightly. Her discipline at your disobedience will be swift. You will only have to fail once at procuring information before she’ll press the button that will activate your chip.”

If Erica’s personality was bolder, she would have told Galan that Commander Sela could take her orders and stick it up where the sun don’t shine. But Erica wasn’t bold, and she could feel herself shrinking away from Galan’s gaze.

“I will contact you again in a few days’ time, at the exact same hour. Be in your quarters then,” he told her before cutting the connection. As soon as the screen went dark, the door chimed and slid open.

Troi stepped into the room and saw that Erica’s face was as white as a ghost.

xxx

Erica once again found herself in that meeting room, where she ended up telling the senior officers of the ship’s crew about the ‘call’ she had gotten from Galan. Captain Picard, Commander Riker, and every other member there, sitting at that table (minus Data), showed concern about how Galan managed to contact her.

“I’m not used to feeling this scared, Captain Picard,” Erica said, wringing her hands together as she felt nervous sweat pouring down her face. “They can still get to me, even if they can’t physically _get_ to me.”

“This is a serious offence,” he told her. “We will get to the bottom of this.” Turning his attention to his officers, he said, “It’s safe to assume that no matter where we are in the Federation, the Romulans will still be able to contact Miss Strong. If we don’t give her any information to give them, the Romulans _will_ perform their little experiment with little to no conscious thought.”

“We _can’t_ give her any information, Captain,” Riker pointed out. “And if we try to formulate some sort of false…story…they’ll know. They have had operatives working within the Federation for years, and they know almost as much about us as we do. They’ll know if something doesn’t add up.”

Erica gnawed at her bottom lip until she began to taste blood. She tried to focus on breathing in and out and steadying her heartbeat. She could feel Troi’s eyes on her—she had learned that Troi could sense others’ emotions—and Erica could only guess, that to her, her fear was blasting into her senses with all the force of a hurricane.

As the Starfleet officers continued to argue all around her, she closed her eyes and retreated into her mind. Vaguely, she could hear their voices, but she was able to block them out for the most part as she surrounded herself with her thoughts.

 _What are the Romulans?_ she asked herself. _Who are they to you?_

 _From what I’ve seen, they’re treacherous, conniving, and downright mean,_ she thought, answering her own question. _But—_ she brought up a point. _Not all Romulans could possibly as bad as those I’ve seen and had the chance of meeting. Mom told me about the Germans once, how not all of them agreed with Hitler’s regime, but they were forced to fight or die, remember? Maybe it is the same for the Romulans?_

_What if you just let the chip change you? How will the humans around you perceive you? Will the transformation succeed?_

_…I don’t know. I don’t know if it’ll hurt, and I don’t know how they’d see me._

_Maybe you should ask? Maybe they have had some_ good _encounters with Romulans?_

Erica opened her eyes and returned the world around her, leaving her thoughts and self-questioning behind. She turned to look at the Captain and waited for a break in the conversation. It wasn’t until ten minutes later that she felt that she could open her mouth.

“Captain?”

Picard’s attention snapped from where he had been listening to Dr. Crusher prove her point about…something and his stern eyes focused on her. “Yes, Miss Strong?”

“I know this question is kind of out of the blue, but have you guys…ever had any _good_ experiences with the Romulans?” she asked. She was quick to explain her question. “Like, all growing up, whenever I read about history, my mother would remind me of World War II, and how not all the Germans who fought were bad. A lot of the Germans were forced to fight.”

There was a stretch of silence where everyone seemed to take in what she had said. Finally, Troi spoke up. “Once, I was taken by the Romulan underground movement so that I could masquerade as a highly-ranked Tal’Shiar agent—a spy. The Romulan officer who got me into that mess was rather nice.”

“I met a Romulan once when we responded to a distress call,” the officer, who had been introduced as Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge, said. With a chuckle, he continued, “And boy, he could have been the Romulan Navy’s hostile-officer poster boy when I first met him. But he warmed up after we started to work together to get off the planet we were stuck on. I could walk, but couldn’t see by that time, and he _couldn’t_ walk but he _could_ see.”

Erica kept her smile small when they shared their stories, but couldn’t help but smile wide at some points. She was confused when Troi mentioned a ‘Romulan underground’, but Picard’s brief tale of his time hunting down someone named Spock on Romulus helped her to understand that the Romulan underground was a group of people who wished to join up with a race of aliens called ‘Vulcans’, who were their ‘biological cousins’. That was another alien species to her list.

By the time they were finished recounting their good experiences with the ‘nefarious’ Romulans, Erica felt her ire ease—but not completely. She still had one more question to ask.

Pushing down the anxiety that reared its ugly head as soon as the thought crossed her mind, she asked, “How…would people react if a Romulan was a Federation citizen?”

Picard’s eyes narrowed slightly in question. “Where are you going with this, Miss Strong?”

Erica found herself wringing her hands as fought to speak, the weight of the words making it almost impossible to get the words out. She knew there were going to be objections, but she had had the time to think about what she was going to say. What Riker had said was probably right—the Romulans wouldn’t believe what she said if the crew of the _Enterprise_ gave her anything fake to say. It didn’t matter if she’d try to feed them something or not, she’d end up having the chip activated. She would just have to come to accept it.

“What I’m saying, Captain…is that, no matter what we do, the chip will be activated. I’m not willing to sacrifice any information that needs to be hidden from the Romulans. I’m not a spy, I wasn’t born to do espionage,” she said. “All I am is a normal girl that was plucked from her bed in the middle of the night, and was whisked away from her home in Alberta, Canada to another planet. If it means I will be helping my fellow humans…and friends of humans,” she added, remembering Worf, and Data “then I will be willing to sacrifice my humanity.”

As soon as she stopped speaking, the room erupted with voices, all trying to say something at once. Erica, Worf, Data, and Picard were the only ones who didn’t speak. Well, until Erica ended up opening her mouth when she couldn’t take it anymore.

“Stop!” she exclaimed, but she was unheard. _I’ve made my choice_.      


	6. Tainctai Shiefvunen, Rilhta Ih Phralae Ssiun

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, I return with another chapter, and not as bad distance between updates, lol. In this chapter, we deviate from the seriousness of the plot of the story, where Erica gets herself acquainted with what happened to her family. I hope you enjoy this chapter! ;)

**(tah-een-k-tah-ee shee-eh-vuh-nen, ur-ee-ilya-tah eeh p-hur-ah-la-ee ssuh-ee-un)  
** **Lit. ‘Intelligent Listener, Someone to Talk to’  
** **“A Wise Listener, Someone To Talk To”**

            Hours later found Erica sitting back down in “her” quarters, absentmindedly playing chess with the computer on the iPad-like device she had been given. She wasn’t really trying and she knew that there was a 90% possibility that the computer would win. So she moved the rook down the side of the board, hoping to get as close to the computer’s king as she could. All of the computer’s pawns—what was left of them—were on the other side of the board, and its remaining bishop was busy with her queen. All she really had left standing between her and her opponent’s king was her opponent’s queen.

            She missed playing chess with her father—he was the chess player of the family. He was the board game player of the family, period. She had only been able to beat him once before she was kidnapped by the Romulans.

            Erica forced her thoughts to stop, and she bit down on her bottom lip hard as tears welled up in her eyes. Was she ever going to be able to see her father again? Her family? How was she ever supposed to go back to her time? Did history ever say that she returned to the 21st Century?

The thought of never seeing her family again, of never feeling her father’s arms around her or hear her mother’s voice terrified, disturbed, and shook her to her core. In that instant, she experienced a feeling akin to one someone would feel if they were castaways on a raft in the middle of a stormy ocean. She was literally stranded without any way to get back.

The PADD chimed, telling her that the computer’s queen had decimated her rook, and that she was back to square one in order to figure out a new strategy. A weary sigh escaped her as she switched off the device, no longer desiring to try and defeat a computer which was nigh impossible to beat. She stood to her feet and moved over to where she sat down behind the desk.

She eyed the computer terminal’s screen before she reached out and tapped one of the buttons located at the base of the screen’s stand. The screen lit up and presented her with what appeared to be a futuristic version of a desktop. But now…she didn’t know what do now.

 _What to do…what to do…?_ In moments, an idea popped into her head, and she said aloud, “Computer: could you please locate the record of Erica Strong of Litworthy, Southern Alberta’s disappearance?” she paused for a moment as she thought back to the date of the day before she woke up in Galan’s lab. Had she glanced at the calendar that day? “On…May 10 th, 2013?” She wasn’t sure if the date was correct.

“ _There was one Erica Strong who disappeared on May 9 th, 2013,_” the feminine voice of the computer informed her.

Erica winced slightly, but knew that the computer was speaking about her. For a moment, she hesitated on asking her next question, knowing that this was the moment where she would feel if her world did or didn’t shatter. “Computer…did…was Erica ever found?”

The silence that hung in the air after her question was deafening, and it seemed to take the computer forever to answer her question. Her heart raced in her ears, and she felt herself holding her breath in nervous anticipation. Would she ever go back? Would she ever see her family again?

The computer chirped again. “ _Erica Strong was never found. Her disappearance remains a mystery to this day due to the fact that no bodily remains were ever found_ ,” it replied.

The world seemed to slow around her as the computer’s words sunk in. She released the breath she was holding in a _whoosh_ , as if she had been punched in the gut. Seconds later she tried to gasp, but nothing happened. _I never go back? That means the people here in the future never find a way to send me back! That means I’ll never see my mummy and daddy again, and I’ll never be able to follow through with my dreams like I would like to! I’m…cut off…from everything I…knew…_

As her thoughts slowed, she managed to suck in a breath of air before she passed out. She spent a few moments regaining her breath, and when she felt she was breathing sufficiently, she whispered, “Computer? Please display a picture of the Strong Family, comprised of Darien, Sarah, Erica, and Steven Strong, circa. 2013.”

The computer chirped an affirmative before the picture she had envisioned in her head made itself known on the screen. Erica blinked at it owlishly before tears welled up in her eyes.

Staring back at her was the family photo her father took when they went to Banff National Park in January, 2013. The people in the picture were all standing knee-deep in the snow, bedecked in a variety of snow-gear, and positively beaming with happiness. Her father and mother stood, arms wrapped around each other, and their faces were turned towards the camera. The picture version of her, Picture-Erica, stood in front of her parents with her left arm linked with her brother’s right arm, and they stood so that their father was visible between their heads.

 _Steve would have been around Riker’s height when he grew up,_ Erica noted before breaking down into violent sobs.

xxx

It was a while before Erica was able to compose herself enough to ask the computer to show her the genealogy tree that stretched from her brother to now. It took a few moments, but soon it was up on the screen. She lifted her head from where she had been resting them on her arms on the tabletop, and stared blearily at the screen. She had to blink a few times before the words became legible and the lines sharp through the thin layers of tears. She started with the patriarch of the known line.

_Steven Eliso Strong  
_ _August 13 th, 2002 – November 9th, 2090  
_ _Human_

For a moment, Erica couldn’t help but cock an eyebrow at the ‘human’ label. Did that mean that Steve’s descendants had crossbred with alien species? She couldn’t help but feel fascination well up inside her at the thought that her family might now be comprised of members from other worlds.

As she read, she discovered that her brother had married a woman named Charlotte Weston when he was 20. They had seven kids, three boys and four girls, before Charlotte died when she was 61. His kids were named Geoff (after their uncle), Darien (after their father), Mitchell, Claire, Samantha, Bailey, and Alexis. Geoff and Darien were the only ones where the timeline continued on after two generations, but the offspring of the others were highlighted, meaning that there were links that would probably lead to another page where the genealogy probably continued.

Nine generations later and the current descendants of her brother were scattered across the stars. He had about one thousand _known_ recorded descendants, though only a handful still sported the last name ‘Strong’, and they lived so far apart and came from such different parts of the family that she doubted that they even knew they were related to each other. There were a few members who lived on the home-world of the Vulcans (though one of them seemed to have joined Starfleet), sporting three-quarter Vulcan genes, there was a half-Betazoid living on a Federation colony, and there was even records stating that a Darcy Strong married a Romulan and went with him to Romulus. She didn’t doubt that her brother had Romulan descendants as well, now.

For a moment, Erica had to wonder if she would ever meet one of them face to face. What would it be like, knowing that you were distantly related to them yet they didn’t know it? She had a feeling that she wouldn’t be able to tell them if she met them if she did meet them. She couldn’t imagine how confused they would be.

She checked the names on the family tree, and committed them to memory. Among the alien descendants there was Soran, T’Li, T’Fal, and Taurik of Vulcan, Donita Rae of Betazed, and countless other humans. Taurik was the one was that had the note saying he joined Starfleet.

She pushed away from the desk and stood to her feet with a quiet moan. She spent the next few minutes pacing around her quarters, mulling over the vast distance between her 21st Century and today’s 24th Century.

Her dark thoughts involving the amount of years that separated her from her family were interrupted when someone rang her doorbell. She looked up with a startled blink, and before she could stop herself, she heard herself call, “Come in.” She really wished that she would have been able to hold her tongue. She really didn’t want to talk to anyone at the moment.

The door to her quarters slid open and the last man she expected to see walked into her ‘room’. Captain Picard stopped a few feet away from her and gave her a kind smile. “How are you feeling, Miss Strong?” he asked.

Erica shrugged. She bit her bottom lip for a second before she replied, “I’m not sure. I’ve just figured out what happened to my family…” She went over to the couch facing the glass coffee table and the door, and thumped gracelessly down onto the cushions. “There’s been at least 9 generations between the time my brother’s kids were born and now.” She stopped and fought with her emotions, not really wanting to cry in front of the captain.

Picard quietly walked over and sat down in the recliner-like chair to the right of her. She met his gaze, and they held it until Picard asked gravely, “What do you mean?”

Erica blinked at the question before realization flowed through her. She gaped for a second as her mind raced. She had alluded to the fact that she was from the past, and she took the captain for a curious fellow, so she figured that he would like some answers.

She looked down at her hands and laced her fingers together. “There’s something I haven’t told you yet,” she finally admitted in a low tone. “I forgot to tell you exactly… _when_ I’m from.”

“When?”

She hummed as she sighed through her nose. “The Romulans didn’t grab me from Earth from _this_ century.” She paused to see if he was paying attention. “They somehow…went back in time…and grabbed me from the 21 st Century.” She peeked up at him once, but otherwise kept her gaze trained down.

She caught the look of utter surprise that crossed the man’s face. She was glad she didn’t blink, because the look was gone faster than a blink of an eye. He leveled a serious gaze on her, and she expected he would launch into a long tirade and then begin to pelt her with rapid-fire questions. But he said nothing, and five minutes later she found herself being unable to bear his heavy gaze and silence any longer.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, but it’s just been—with what’s been going on, I honestly forgot.” She only paused for a moment before she charged and finished. “Galan told me that it was easier to avoid drawing attention by taking someone from the past rather than having someone disappear in the…future—no, present. So they took me.”

Picard seemed to think about it for only a short while longer before he finally spoke, allowing her to fall silent, much to her relief. “And…what descendants did you find?” he asked. She could tell he was changing the subject—for now—but she could see this new revelation (to him) was raging behind his serious eyes.

Erica took this change of subject happily. “I’ve found that my brother has descendants on Vulcan, Betazed, Romulus, in Starfleet, and in other…places. It’s kind of…neat to think that I have great-to-the-ninth-power alien nieces and nephews.”

She watched as Picard slowly rose to his feet. He slowly began to pace back and forth the length of the ‘living room’ part of her quarters, hands folded behind his back. “Do you know the names of those nieces and nephews?” he asked.

Erica nodded once. “Yes.”

xxx

The doors to Ten Forward swished open, revealing the dark interior of the restaurant/semi-dry bar. Picard had mentioned it to her before he left her quarters. Immediately, she fell in love with the cozy interior, and she felt drawn to the large windows that gave a stunning view of the starscape ahead of the ship.

Slowly, Erica walked deeper into the expansive room, taking in the people and activity contained in the room. She noted that there were oodles of empty tables, but she ended up gravitating over to the bar, where she sat down on one of the bar stools. She was eighteen before she had been taken into the future, and in Canada at the time she was legally able to drink. But that didn’t mean that she would order something alcoholic. The captain had told her about how most alcohol was replaced with something called ‘synthehol’, so she would most likely order something with that in it.

Resting her forearms on the bar’s surface, she scanned the wall behind it. There was two replicator alcoves behind the bar, and a dark-skinned woman wearing strange garb stood off to the right, serving a customer. Erica waited to see if she would notice her.

Erica offered a weak smile as the woman walked over to where she was sitting, the only thing between them being the bar. “Well, hello,” the woman said. “I haven’t seen you around here before. I’m Guinan.”

Erica felt her lips stretch a bit as her smile widened at the introduction. “I’m Erica Strong,” instinctively, she held out her hand. “Pleased to meet you, Guinan,” she said when the woman grasped her hand and they shook. Withdrawing her hand, she asked, “Do you have anything extremely chocolatey? I need something…loaded with chocolate.” She didn’t feel like taking the synthehol on today, now that she thought about it, she was much more for something that she was familiar with. She was pretty sure that she wouldn’t like the taste of synthehol anyway.

The woman smiled kindly. “I know just what you need,” she told her before moving over to the replicator. She came back less than a minute later and set a bowl of what appeared to be chocolate cake, mixed with layers of hot fudge, dark, milk, and white chocolate chips, and generous amounts of white chocolate pudding. Instantly, her mouth began to water, and she wondered how on earth she was going to eat this decadent item without getting half of it on her face.

“Wow, thank you,” she said, voice full of appreciation. “It reminds me of something a friend of my mother’s would make.” She didn’t realize how hard she would have to work to keep her voice steady once she spoke.

“’Would’?”

For a moment, she wished people wouldn’t focus on the tense of her words. “I won’t ever be able to see her, or my mother again,” she replied quietly.

She expected Guinan to ask her questions in order to learn all the details. But to her shock, Guinan stated, “Time _can_ be a cruel and unforgiving chasm.” Erica felt her eyes widen in surprise, and she had to struggle to keep the handle of the spoon in her hand from clattering to the tabletop of the bar.

“How…did you know…?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper. She could barely hear it over the sounds of the other patrons—thankfully, she felt her words as much as she, barely, heard them. Shakily, she lifted a spoon of the chocolaty concoction to her lips. She practically shoved it into her mouth before withdrawing the utensil.

The tiniest of smiles appeared on Guinan’s face as she pulled a rag out from under the bar and began to wipe the counter slightly to the right of Erica’s elbow. She didn’t say anything for a while, and by the time Guinan spoke again, she was practically squirming. “Let’s just say…I know some things,” she replied.

Erica swallowed. “You talked to the captain,” she stated.

Guinan shook her head. “Not recently.”

Erica narrowed her eyes suspiciously, but didn’t respond to that answer. Instead she placed another spoonful of the dessert into her mouth. Swallowing, she conceded, “The Romulans grabbed me, brought me to the 24th Century from the 21st. I’ve been displaced in time, and when I investigated, I found that I never returned. I’m never going to see my family again.”

The bottom-edge of her vision became blurry as tears she couldn’t push down welled up in her eyes. “I’m…never… _ever_ …going to see my family again. I’m never, truly ever, going to experience—” she had to stop and bite the inside of her cheeks in order to keep herself from breaking down in the middle of Ten Forward.

The soft sound of Guinan speaking lowly helped her gain control of her emotions. “Did you have any siblings?” she asked.

“I had a brother,” Erica sniffed.

“What was his name?”

Erica didn’t appreciate the past tense being used, but she knew that it was inevitable. Steven was no longer alive. She couldn’t say ‘he is my brother’, that wasn’t right. Now it would always, forever be, ‘he _was_ my brother’.

“His name was Steven. Steven Eliso Strong. He was my best friend.”

There was a small pause. “Have you discovered the names of his descendants, the ones that are living now?”

Erica didn’t know what it was, but she found it very easy to talk to Guinan. She found it strangely comforting. “I found out that there are a lot. Typical Strong survival instincts—couldn’t let the family line die out. A bunch of them are from Vulcan, and one’s a Betazoid, through his daughter Bailey and his son Mitchell,” she said with a nod. “There are also a lot of humans. A lot of people came from my brother. Makes me wonder if I’d ever be able to meet any of them, since they’re spread so far apart. I’m pretty sure some of them work in Starfleet—one of the Vulcans does. I think his name is ‘Taurik’.” She didn’t mention the possible Romulans.

Guinan seemed pleased that she had managed to loosen Erica’s tongue, but Erica overlooked it and went back to eating the chocolate pudding/cake hybrid she was giving. Silence descended between them, and it continued on because Erica didn’t have anything else to say.

Erica was almost finished her treat when the ‘bartender’ finally spoke again. “I know a Taurik,” she told her with a smile in her voice.

Erica looked up in surprise. “You do?”

Guinan nodded. “He often comes in here for a meal with his friends.”

The young woman cocked an eyebrow at the claim. “There is probably more than one Taurik out there…right?”

Guinan shrugged slightly. “Perhaps. But maybe you should see _this_ Taurik for yourself,” she suggested. With a nod that clearly meant to point her attention to a point behind her, she said, “He’s here today.”

A cold feeling settled into the pit of her stomach, and shivers traveled up and down her spine as the feeling of being watched descended upon her. Slowly, she turned around on her seat and found herself staring into the dark eyes of a Vulcan sitting across the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I wrote this chapter, I accidentally spelt the word ‘mommy’ as mummy, with a ‘u’. Seeing as I pronounce ‘mom’ and ‘mommy’ as ‘mum’ and ‘mummy’, and every Canadian I know does as well, I left it as ‘mummy’, since Erica is from Canada. I guess the difference in spelling in some words has been fascinating me lately… lol
> 
> Also, I’m not sure if I’m correct about the amount of generations between Steven and Taurik. Clare Raymond, a woman awoken from cryogenic sleep in Season 1 Episode 26, “The Neutral Zone”, had two sons, and the amount of generations between them and the ones living at the time of the episode were 12. I hypothesized that Tommy and Eddy were born sometime in the ‘80s, so that accounted for the 12 generations in the Raymond line opposed to the 9 in the Strong line. Steven didn’t marry until he was 20, and his wife didn’t become pregnant until he was 21, and by that time it was 2023. So… yeah.


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